


Cheese Steaks and Stake Outs

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 03:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike tries to get Jesse to open up, and vice versa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheese Steaks and Stake Outs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vintar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: Written for NYR 2013 but I didn't get it in the collection early enough :) Enjoy anyway!

It was one day when they were driving around, picking up dead drops, when Jesse cocked his head, looked at Mike and said, “You know… I don’t really know much of anything about you.”

Mike turned. It wasn’t like the earlier days of their partnership, when Jesse had commented about nothing and continually asked things in an effort to piss Mike off, presumably before Mike dropped him in a ditch somewhere. 

“Well, what would you like to know?” Mike inquired.

Jesse thought about it, looking down at his hands and considering what he could ask, that he might only get one question.

“Where are you from? What did you do before? What’s your family like? How’d you become so bad-ass?” Okay, so that had been way more than one question, but once Jesse had gotten started, he couldn’t really stop.

“Whoa, slow down, Kid,” Mike told him with one of those rare Mike smiles. “One question at a time. I’m from Philadelphia.”

“What part?” Jesse ventured, very ready to burst into singing the theme from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air if the answer was West.

“A section of the Northeast known as Mount Airy,” Mike replied. The way he said it, the two words sort of ran together – Jesse wondered if that counted as a Philadelphia accent or not. He cocked his head to the side.

“Did you eat cheese steaks?” he inquired, with a little self-conscious blush sneaking into his cheeks for asking what he already convinced himself was a stupid question.

“All the time,” Mike replied, “They don’t make them anywhere else the way that they do in Philly.”

“Do you ever go back? Is your family still out there?” Jesse continued. Mike was very far away from home. As much as he had threatened to keep driving until he reached Oregon that one time, Jesse didn’t know what it would be like to live so far away from the ABQ.   
Mike shook his head. 

“No. My only family is here… my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter,” he explained. “Not that my daughter-in-law has two words to say to me, even before Ashley died.”

Jesse looked at him. 

“Ashley – that’s your son?”

“Yeah,” Mike replied. “Sometimes we’d call him Ash. He was a good kid.” He shook his head. “I’m just glad that Kaylee is around. She’s that little part of him that survived. A rose growing through rock, or something.” He smiled sadly. “Wow, I’m waxing poetic. Time for someone to shoot me.”

Jesse reached out and pointed to his bandage from Mexico.

“Somebody already did,” he commented.

Mike laughed.

“That’s true.”

Jesse looked down at the dashboard. 

“Do you ever… you ever miss home? Philly? Your family and everything?”

Mike nodded.

“All the time, I guess. I miss the way it used to be. But nothing stays the same forever, kid.”

“I hope that’s true,” Jesse whispered. Mike turned to look at him, and Jesse shrugged. “Right now everything’s jumbled… confused. I want to figure my shit out sometime before I’m dead.”

Mike smiled fondly.

“Well, Jesse. You’re pretty young. You have a lot of time ahead of you so long as you keep your head screwed on straight.”

“What you mean is, as long as I don’t get high.” Jesse mumbled the words and thought of Jane. He had thought that he had had a future with her. He thought that they were going to be in love, that they were going to get married and have children and… maybe he hadn’t even thought that far ahead. All that had happened back then was fuzzy now. 

“Nothing good is going to come from getting high, kid,” Mike told him. “In Philadelphia, I was a cop. And I saw a lot of people who could have gone somewhere and done something – and I’m not necessarily saying they all could have changed the world, that they all would have been great at something – but they could have had nice little lives with families, happy lives, and instead they didn’t care about anything but where they were going to get their next hit. And I don’t want to see you become that. Not ever.”

Jesse flushed.

“Never really had anyone care that much about what I did,” he said, not able to meet Mike’s eyes. “I mean, I guess Mr. White does, but that’s really only so long as it might mess up the cook, you know? I think if I screwed myself up on my own time, he wouldn’t care so much. Like after Gale…” Jesse tried to focus on his breathing. He wouldn’t cry now, not now, not in front of someone as stoic as Mike. “He just… I guess he tried. But I don’t think he actually gave all that much of a shit, really.”

When Jesse finally ventured to look back at Mike, he was surprised to see that Mike was actually looking at him sadly. 

“Sorry,” Jesse murmured, “Didn’t mean to get all… uh… depressing on you.”

Mike didn’t seem to be listening.

“Listen, kid. Why don’t we take a half an hour off? We’re ahead of time on these drops, after all. We need to stop off and get something to eat.”

Jesse looked surprised.

“Oh… Uh, okay,” he stammered. Maybe Mike was just that tired of him and was going to leave him at a Perkins somewhere.

Mike seemed to pick up on Jesse’s nervousness and gave him a kind gaze.

“I think we need to talk one-on-one kid. Not in the car. For real. And you… you need to eat. You look like you could fall over at any second and I’d rather have my guy ready to go if shit goes sour.”

Jesse actually blushed at that.

“The guy? I’m the guy now?”

Mike laughed.

“Yeah. I guess you are, kid. Now think about what you want to get. I’m buying.”

He pulled off at a rest stop in front of a Sonic, complete with a little drive through and waitresses on roller skates.

“Wow. I’ve never actually been to one of these,” Jesse admitted. “I always saw the commercials and wondered if these didn’t actually exist.”

“The food is pretty good,” Mike told him. “I haven’t been disappointed yet. And I like the old-style feel that they have going on here.” He walked over to a red table that was flanked by two equally-red benches.

“Does it remind you of when you were growing up?” Jesse asked, his eyes gently teasing. “From the 1800’s when everyone had muskets?”

“They had moved on from muskets by the 1800’s, kid. And, no, that’s not from personal experience.”  
Jesse smiled. It was odd to feel himself doing that, to feel warm and safe. Or, even more than that, to feel useful. Like Mike actually did want him around. 

“Do you know what you want, kid?” Mike inquired. 

Jesse thought about it. Even a decision like that, such a little one, filled him with a kind of dread at his indecisiveness. Jesse had grown to hate change, and more than that to fear it, and decisions always brought change. Well, this one probably wouldn’t.  
Eventually, he conceded, “Uh, can I get some chicken fingers with honey mustard sauce?”

Mike nodded and approached the speaker. 

“How are you today? Good? I’ll have one order of chicken fingers and a hamburger, no cheese, with fries.”

He turned around and made his way back over to the bench, sitting down.

“Calm down, kid,” he told Jesse. “You make me nervous.”

This of course only served to make Jesse that little bit more nervous. He started scratching at his ear, picking an old scab and looking everywhere in the vicinity except for at Mike.

“Kid,” Mike said again. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just… I don’t… I’m so confused.” Jesse didn’t mean to say the words, but they came tumbling out of his mouth anyway, unbidden. He wanted to be Mike’s stalwart wingman, or whatever he was exactly. He didn’t want to show any sign of weakness. But here he was. Weak. That was what he was. That was the one face that he seemed to wear well. Probably because it was the true one, once you got to Jesse’s core. That was what Mr. White would say, at least. Wouldn’t he? Didn’t he take any opportunity to tell Jesse what a failure he was?

“What are you confused about?” Mike’s voice was firm, but strangely gentle. He reached out and tilted Jesse’s chin upwards, so that Jesse could look into Mike’s eyes. “You know, you act pretty quick in a crisis. So if you don’t have the rest of it all figured out just yet, then that isn’t all that big of a deal. You can take your time.”

Jesse put his hands on either side of his head and pressed, shuddering.

“No, I can’t. I have to figure it out now. Before… before it’s too late.”

“But what do you need to figure out?”

“Everything.” Jesse paused to get the next word out, but he was cut off by the arrival of the waitress on roller skates. She was a pretty blonde, all dressed in red. Jesse was glad she was blonde – dark-haired women these days always made him think of Andrea or Jane, and how he’d irreparably destroyed the latter and was probably on his way to doing the same to the former. Blondes made him think of those days when he’d just crashed with any girl willing to have him, when they’d sat around and drank and just had fun as the mood took them. No broken hearts and no waking up in bed next to the person you loved, dead.  
Jesse stared down at his chicken fingers, reluctant to pick them up for a moment. For some reason, he remembered his mother cautioning, “Don’t touch that yet, it’s hot”, from when he was a kid. But when had he ever listened to her? That had been what she said, at least. He never listened. Never listened but they always tried… wasn’t that what she had said? Except he could count all the times that they had stopped trying. Maybe Mike would stop trying one day, too. He wasn’t ready for that day.

“Kid, eat up,” Mike said gently, as he picked up his burger. “It’s not going to bite you.” Jesse raised his eyes to meet Mike’s and was surprised to see that the older man was smiling. Mike wasn’t mad at him, he was… what was he? It seemed like he was actually kind of enjoying indulging Jesse. 

So Jesse scooped up a chicken finger and bite off a chunk, swallowing it even as it burned the roof of his mouth. He actually kind of liked that part. The burning part.

“See,” Mike encouraged. “When you eat, it makes you feel better. You need to eat more, kid. You’re rail thin.” Jesse gave him a sad smile. Admittedly, sometimes he just plain forgot to eat, or just didn’t have the effort to do much more than lay on his hard, cold bed and stare up at the ceiling as he saw visions of Gale projected against it. 

“Yeah,” Jesse whispered, taking another bite. There was something good in doing what Mike wanted him to do. A different feeling than the barked orders that came from Mr. White. Mike seemed to really care about him, as if he were directing Jesse to insure Jesse’s own protection. His own life. He’d been there for Jesse when he hadn’t even cared about himself. 

Jesse shivered. He didn’t want to think about that. If he thought about that, he certainly wouldn’t be able to eat.

He let out a soft little whimper, and Mike looked at him, concerned. 

“Kid,” Mike said carefully. “You keep floating off in your own little world. Why don’t you talk to me? Let me in a little? What can it hurt?” Jesse shook his head. How could he tell Mike what he needed when he didn’t even know, himself?

“Not yet,” Jesse said quietly. 

“When then, kid?”

“One day. Maybe… maybe buy me a cheese steak. A real one.”

Mike’s lips curled into a smile.

“All right, kid. That’ll be the day.”


End file.
